Thursday, July 30, 2009

Photographic Recursivity?

Looking at Jonathan Morse's cool photography site (which you should all visit forthwith, and if you do I'll save you some groaner of a joke about "thirdwith", or worse, "sandwhich") I saw a picture of some poor cowering punk being photographed by press photographers (with those truly intimidating big-flash units that they used in the day) that made me wonder.

Who has taken the most recursive photograph?

I include here three different "single-recursions" that I liked.

The first one on the left is the classic photo of the photographer at work. And it has to be work just to carry around the kit that dude has.

Really, check out the lens on that camera on his back! He's either a professional or he really has something he's compensating for.

The second is the equally classic reflection photo (which unfortunately just reminded me of the dude who used to put pictures on ebay in which his nude reflection was on the item for sale).That one is from NASA, and they were kind enough to take the time to enhance the reflection in the visor. What can't you do on a Hollywood soundstage?



The third is the party-favorite, taking a picture of the person taking a picture of you.



But it is not enough! All these photos (below) make me want to do is go to a car-show in Seoul and snap a picture of the guy who is always snapping a picture of the 50 guys who are snapping pictures of the car models (In fact, at these car shows, the cars go pretty much un-attended in favor of the models. Sensible, really).

Or, get even more meta (somehow) - line 10 people up and have the first two take pictures of each other, 3 takes pictures of the first two, 4 of those three, etc...

Why?

Because someone has to do the really dumb shit!

Guiness World Record folks, where are you?

5 comments:

Jonathan Morse said...

Thanks for the link, Charles! You sent me off to Google too, and there I found some photographic self-portraits by Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron -- that is, from the very beginnings of photography. But those are just conventional pictures taken with a long cable release. For recursivity, though, how do you like this one by Ilse Bing from (I guess) the 1930s?

http://viewoncanadianart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/402.jpg

Anonymous said...

uh...the guy with all those lenses strapped on him...he has to because he is on a golf course, taking pictures of a professional tournament (see the gallery and guy with a scoreboard in the background). How did I notice this? That's because I'm a golfer! Golf, baby!

BKF

Anonymous said...

Please send the photo of the guy on the golf course to your sister so she can see that there is someone out there with more camera shit than me.

HYS

Charles Montgomery said...

Jonathon - nice photo...

BKF - Golf - a nice walk totally spoiled by "whack and fuck"

HYS - heh.. but are you getting paid for it?

Anonymous said...

Fibonacci!